From 21 April, 2015 Google is taking very seriously how your website performs for mobile visitors. Internet searches on phones and tablets are growing year-on-year and having a website that doesn’t work isn’t an option anymore for any business.

Perhaps this notice from Google will be the final push that gets business owners off the fence and taking their mobile visitors seriously.

The mobile website design world has changed considerably over the past few years. A couple of years ago the best practice was to have a “stand-alone” mobile website. One specifically designed for small screen and touch responsive. This was a good fix for businesses with limited budgets and/or those who just wanted to plug the leak of mobile visitors who were leaving their websites due to how badly they performed on phones.

the world has gone mobile

Nowadays the best solution is “responsive” web design. These websites work by detecting the size of the screen and altering the display of elements correctly for each. So one website now works well on phones, tablets and computers. This saves money, means you only need one website, and also stops visitors falling down the gaps that appeared between mobile and conventional websites.

With Google getting deadly serious about how websites work for their mobile visitors there is no time to delay, particularly for those companies who already have good website positions as these are now in danger.